1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a multilayered ceramic component having excellent capacity characteristics and high reliability.
2. Description of the Related Art
A multilayered ceramic capacitor (hereinafter, referred to as MLCC) is manufactured by forming an electrode layer by printing conductive paste on a formed dielectric layer sheet using screen, gravure, and the like, so as to print inner electrode layers, and multilayering sheets on which the inner electrode layers are printed.
A conductive paste used in this case is generally made of metal powders such as nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), or the like, an inorganic material of ceramic powder (common material), or the like, and an organic material such as a dispersing agent, a resin, an additive, a solvent, or the like.
Since the metal powders such as Ni, Cu, or the like, generally used in an internal electrode paste have a melting point lower than ceramic powder used in the dielectric layers, a temperature at which a sintering shrinkage starts is low. Therefore, the ceramic powder is added as a common material and is moved to a high temperature so that a shrinkage starting temperature thereof is similar to that of the dielectric layer as much as possible. Since the ceramic powder used as the common material at the process in which the internal electrode layer is fired is absorbed into the dielectric layers to finally influence dielectric characteristics, it is designed to have a composition which is the same as or similar to that of the dielectric layers. In a general case, barium titanate (BaTiO3) having the same component as the dielectric layers are used as a main component of the common material. In order to highly increase a sintering starting temperature, various kinds of oxide-based minor components are used.
In manufacturing the MLCC, the internal electrode is sintered by the following processes.
The process includes (1) squeezing out the common material while shrinking the metal powders at 800 to 1000° C., (2) connecting the internal electrode layers with each other while shrinking the dielectric layers at 1000 to 1100° C., and (3) agglomerating the internal electrode layers while densifying the dielectric layers at 1100° C. or more.
As confirmed in the above process, as a sintering temperature increases, an electrode disconnection increases to thereby decrease connectivity of an electrode. For a thinned MLCC, as the particulate metal powders are used, an electrode disconnection phenomenon is further generated.
In accordance with a recent trend of miniaturization and multi-functionalization of electronic products, the MLCC embedded in the electronic products is required for being miniaturized and having high capacity. In order to implement the miniaturized and high-capacity MLCC, thickness of the dielectric layers interposed between the internal electrode layers of the ceramic body decreases, or multilayered numbers of the internal electrode layers increase. However, in the case in which the thickness of the dielectric layer decreases, there is a limitation in that the reliability of the MLCC is deteriorated.
Therefore, a multilayered ceramic component capable of improving the reliability and the capacity of the MLCC needs to be developed.